Rockwell Automation Inc, the world's leading industrial automation and digital transformation company, today announced that Barrett Steel, the UK's leading independent steel storage company, has chosen Fiix's Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to manage its ongoing maintenance programs and reduce downtime.
The deployment of Fiix's CMMS is part of Barrett Steel's digital maintenance transformation program, aimed at streamlining and simplifying all its activities in a mobile environment.
Barrett Steel had already deployed a Synthetic Rate of Return (SRR) management system developed and installed by CHG, one of its trusted suppliers and a Rockwell Automation-approved system integrator. For CHG, the CMMS proposed by Fiix was an ideal solution for further development and scaling of the system, working with Rockwell Automation to create a tailor-made solution based on a five-year return-on-investment project.
Deployed on the cloud, Fiix's computerized maintenance management system creates workflows for scheduling, organizing and tracking equipment maintenance, seamlessly connecting to enterprise systems to make data-driven decisions. As the publisher of one of the world's most widely used CMMSs, Fiix manages over 2 million assets and generates more than 6 million work orders a year.
ThingWorx, PTC's Smart Connected Products (SCP) solution as a service (SaaS), also plays a key role in the transformation of maintenance operations. This application connects all the company's systems, enabling the right people to view the right information. ThingWorx offers the functionality, flexibility and scalability companies need to drive industrial innovation, including the ability to source, contextualize and synthesize data while orchestrating processes, while delivering powerful experiences in web, mobile and augmented reality (AR) environments.
Malte Dieckelmann, Vice President Software Sales for Rockwell Automation in the EMEA region, said: " We developed a digital transformation plan based on ThingWorx, coupled with a powerful, user-friendly CMMS solution, with a view to simply generating work order tickets, identifying ongoing health and safety tasks, and digitizing paper-based processes. The resulting solution reduces risks for both daily operations and operators. "
Peter Clarke, Director at CHG, added: " We prepared a trial version of the Fiix solution and integrated value-added demonstration data based on an evaluation. Using this information, we created preventive maintenance programs that Barrett Steel was able to simulate and test from smartphones and tablets, a major requirement of the initial plan. "
" We've been at the forefront of the UK steel industry for over 150 years and put our customers at the heart of everything we do. ", said Paul Burke, Barrett Steel's Director of Operations. " Any downtime at any of our 26 UK sites is likely to result in delivery delays, which is simply unacceptable. That's why we're constantly looking to deploy the best possible solutions to ensure maximum operational availability. Given the mobile nature of our operations, remote access was just as essential as ease of use, and the Fiix and ThingWorx solution ideally met our expectations. "
The installation of a computerized maintenance management system is one of the first ambitious steps in the company's digital transformation plan, which will eventually include a wider range of applications that can be developed, adapted, deployed and supported by CHG Electrical and Rockwell Automation.